We report on a two-week deployment of a peer-to-peer, mobile, location-

enhanced messaging service. This study is specifically aimed at investigating

the need for and effectiveness of automatic location disclosure mechanisms,

the emerging strategies to achieve plausible deniability, and at understanding

how place and activity are used to communicate plans, intentions and provide

awareness. We outline the research that motivated this study, briefly describe

the application we designed, and provide details of the evaluation process. The

results show a lack of value of automatic messaging functions, confirm the need

for supporting plausible deniability in communications, and highlight the

prominent use of activity instead of place to indicate one’s location. Finally, we

offer suggestions for the development of social mobile applications.

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In  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005)

Publisher  Springer Verlag
All copyrights reserved by Springer 2005.

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